NEW BALKAN ERA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19698, 2 August 1938, Page 5

NEW BALKAN ERA

TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP

FREEDOM FOR BULGARIA

PACT WITH ENTENTE

REJOICING IN SOFIA

(Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Aug. 2, 9 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 1.

A message from Athens states that the main features of the new friendship treaty between Bulgaria and the Balkan Entente—Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia and Rumania—which was signed on Sunday night at Salonika, are:—

(1) Bulgaria adheres to the nonaggression and arbitration understanding already existing among the nations forming the Entente.

(2) The other signatories agree to the renunciation of the clauses in the Neuilly Treaty limiting Bulgaria's armaments and forbidding her to introduce conscription and to the renunciation of the conditions of the Lausanne Convention of 1923 demilitarising Bulgaria's frontiers in Thrace. The treaty is regarded as the first step to Bulgaria's joining the Entente. A message from Sofia says the treaty is held to open a new era in Balkan history. Crowds in the streets cheered the news, many participating in torchlight processions, while army planes flying overhead dropped leaflets announcing 'that the war clauses of the Neuilly Treaty no longer existed.

The Government newspaper, Dness, says that Bulgaria now has the right to organise openly her military strength.